Ancients Behaving Badly (2009– ) User Reviews

YTV meets the History Channel

[michellepaints · 1 August 2011]

I can only assume the History Channel was attempting to reach out to a younger audience with this series. I certainly felt old watching it - comic book illustrations complete with spurting animated blood? Please (and fast forward). Take warning from the title: Ancients Behaving Badly!!! It's a title pulled right from the front page of any celebrity news rag.

I give it a little more credit than the previous (excellent) reviewer did because there was some actual nuggets of real information. The analyzing of battle strategies and reconstruction of some of the weapons and fighting methods was actually informative. Apart from that it was like watching Hamlet rewritten by a teenage drama club: "Yo Yorick! He was my bro Horatio!"

"Historians" Behaving Badly

[Polyunsaturate · 3/10 · 21 October 2010]

This series left me stunned. I literally could not comprehend how a show that was airing on the "History" Channel could be so full of undocumented, biased conjecture.

This left me depressed for the state of "educational" television. With it's flashy animations, blood-splatter, overly dramatic narration, and erroneous historical "information," this is definitely a show that you can skip.

It comes across as nothing more than a TV version of tabloid gossip rags; I've no idea how the History Channel could let this air. There are so many sources of information on all of the people investigated that this kind of misrepresentation is inexcusable.

Again, not worth your time.

Ridiculous Premise

[sully3561-31-276974 · 1/10 · 15 April 2016]

Late to the party (and, no, not sorry).

The entire premise of this "historical" program is absurd. This series is the dubious result of taking third-hand accounts of events that occurred centuries (sometimes millennia) ago (most often chronicled by non-witnesses hundreds of years after the events) and, with ZERO direct evidence,attempting to shoehorn historical figures into an arbitrary and deeply flawed continuum of contemporary American cultural mores and norms. This is pseudo-soft science at its absolute worst.

Sadly, this sort of supreme arrogance is exemplary of the state of so-called scholarship, at least as it appears in "popular" media. No wonder this abomination masquerading as historical "entertainment" didn't last. As stated succinctly by another reviewer: "Don't waste your time."

Entertainment

[drjgardner · 5/10 · 24 December 2018]

This series is neither history nor psychiatry, but I did find it entertaining. If you approach it for the entertainment value it's enjoyable, but the psychobabble and the "scientific" evidence is just plain nonsense.